[Xargo]

Good day,

two days ago my brother bought the famous next generation RPG Oblivion, he got a Radeon X300 256MB PCIe graphics card so he doesn't got any problems running it. Anyway, I still got my old PC including my NVIDIA GeForce FX5200 128MB AGP8x and certainly not able to run such games.

Because of that I've decided I need an upgrade, I will need one later on anyway. But the problem is my motherboard is still AGP8x max supported, so if I want to switch to a new graphics card I will need PCIe. Another solution is the well known last AGP graphics card of NVIDIA, the GeForce 7800 GS AGP; indeed a good solution but I've decided not to choose that one because I will need to switch over to PCIe later on anyway.

Now I got some questions about this, it would be great if you guys could help me with this.

First of all the graphics card, if I'm going to switch over to PCIe and I think I'm going to buy the recently released NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GTX 512MB, that's an extremely good card but unfortunately also extremely expensive, about 550 - 600 euros. Do you guys think I should buy this one, is it ridiculous to spend 550 - 600 euros for a graphics card or not? Maybe it's better to get the GeForce 7800 GTX 265 MB which got released last year in June by NVIDIA?

Secondly, the motherboard. I will need to buy a new motherboard if I want to use my PCIe graphics card. I currently got one from Gigabyte. The disadvantage is that I don't have much experience with motherboards. Could you guys help me with this?

Thirdly, I currently got a 2.66 GHz CPU of Intel. If that one is compatible with the new motherboard I could stick with that, but 2.66 is quite low anyway, it will certainly slow down the performance of my video card so I think it's better that I just also buy a new CPU together with the motherboard. Which CPU do you guys recommend? I hope not to spend too much for the CPU though.

Lastly I will probably also need a new power supply when I'm going to buy a new motherboard, or not? I don't got much experience with power supplies.

Thanks in advance,
signed Xargo.

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So you pretty much want a whole new pc, if youre in Europe ATI is usuaually cheaper and an x1900 isnt any slower than a 7900 slightly faster depending on the games you are playing.

If its for gaming youre gonna want an AMD cpu as well they are cheaer as well which is always nice, but youre restricted by what you can afford, you start with whatever you can fit in the budget. Youll need a new PSU probably as newer components need more power, youll want 450W from a decent brand but they are easy to find, go shopping round some sites and youll get a rough idea what you want and what you can afford.

[warriorscot]

So you pretty much want a whole new pc, if youre in Europe ATI is usuaually cheaper and an x1900 isnt any slower than a 7900 slightly faster depending on the games you are playing.

If its for gaming youre gonna want an AMD cpu as well they are cheaer as well which is always nice, but youre restricted by what you can afford, you start with whatever you can fit in the budget. Youll need a new PSU probably as newer components need more power, youll want 450W from a decent brand but they are easy to find, go shopping round some sites and youll get a rough idea what you want and what you can afford.

[warriorscot]

So you pretty much want a whole new pc, if youre in Europe ATI is usuaually cheaper and an x1900 isnt any slower than a 7900 slightly faster depending on the games you are playing.

If its for gaming youre gonna want an AMD cpu as well they are cheaer as well which is always nice, but youre restricted by what you can afford, you start with whatever you can fit in the budget. Youll need a new PSU probably as newer components need more power, youll want 450W from a decent brand but they are easy to find, go shopping round some sites and youll get a rough idea what you want and what you can afford.